Rocketship Education Taught its President Important Lessons

Public schools are a vital part of modern living. Without them, countries’ human capital wouldn’t offer nearly as much value to their national welfare as if they did attend quality public schools.

While most places in the world, and all places in the United States, have public schools for children ranging from 4 to 18 years of age, most low-income areas don’t offer quality education.

Preston Smith began his career as an educator in 2002, after earning a degree in Latin American studies to better communicate with young Latino students and their families in his hometown of San Jose. He found that students in low-income San Jose weren’t privy to good educations. As such, he set out to change things.

Alongside tech genius John Danner, Preston Smith made Rocketship Education, a group of public charter schools that operate within the United States. After its first ten years of operation and branching out to eighteen individual locations, Preston Smith became privy to tons of information related to teaching he didn’t previously know. In early August, he shared some of these sentiments with the Internet.

As a pioneer in personalized education, in which students have lessons built just for them using tablets, laptops, and desktops, Smith found it vital to students’ success for teachers to visit their homes. Doing so helped students learn more by teachers having a better idea of how they live at home.

Parents are included in the interview process, with panels of six parents combined with administrators to form well-rounded groups of Rocketship representatives that thoroughly screened applicants. Although this increases the pressure of interviews, such is helpful in weeding unqualified candidates out of contention.

Parents also submit their opinions of teachers on a regular basis. Educators are expected to change their instructional styles if parents send bad reports about them, making it even more important that Rocketship Education chooses candidates that are willing to mold their methods to what their students benefit most from.

Finally, parents and family members should be proud of children attending public school. They should never say bad things about public schools’ status as being “public,” as Rocketship has proven some public institutions are better than private counterparts.